Next Volkswagen Touran previewed: Seven-seater to get 300 miles of range

On sale 2027 | Price from £45,000 (est)

With an increasing number of seven-seaters taking the form of SUVs, you might imagine that the humble people carrier would be heading the way of the Dodo, but for the Volkswagen Touran, there’s hope in sight in the form of evolution. And in order to safeguard its future well into the next decade, the new Touran will be electric.

Counting other electric seven-seaters including the Citroën ë-Berlingo and Vauxhall Combo Life Electric among its key rivals – as well as a growing number of seven-seat electric SUV rivals, including the Kia EV9 and Peugeot e-5008 – the Touran will face strong competition. It’ll also be directly competing with another Volkswagen product, the ID Buzz, which is so good we made it our overall What Car? Car of the Year back in 2023.

The current Touran has been a frequent winner at the What Car? Awards, taking home our MPV of the Year Award five times between 2016 and 2022.

Being based on older underpinnings which are unable to support either electric or plug-in hybrid power, today’s Touran is available solely with a 148bhp 1.5-litre petrol engine. And from 2030, it won’t be able to be sold thanks to the impending ban on new petrol and diesel cars.

In terms of styling, the new Touran is expected to take cues both from Volkswagen’s current range of electric cars, as well as the old model and more recent MPV concept cars, including 2011’s Bulli and 2019’s Budd-e concept (pictured below). Our artist’s rendering shows how it would likely include the full-width light bar at the front which has been seen on the most recent VW models, while keeping the traditional proportions of an MPV.

While technical details are a long way from being confirmed, the new Touran’s modern underpinnings are expected to allow it to use batteries of between 60-80kWh in capacity. For context, the Buzz in seven-seat LWB form manages an official 291 miles from its 86kWh battery. Thanks to a lower weight and expected advances in battery technology, we’d expect the new Touran to offer around 300 miles of range.

Like the Buzz, the new Touran will be sold in both front and four-wheel drive forms and with various combinations of batteries and power outputs. The line-up is likely to be crowned by a sporty GTX model.

Inside, the Touran is expected to borrow heavily from Volkswagen’s current electric car line-up. That means instruments will be displayed on a small screen directly in front of the driver, while a large touchscreen will take care of most other functions. 

We’ve had mixed results with Volkswagen’s latest setups, because while most of the brand’s touchscreens respond quickly to your inputs, some other areas, such as the touch-sensitive sliders to change the temperature in the ID 7 Tourer, are harder to use.

Being electric should help the Touran’s quest for space, where the lack of a central gearbox tunnel means rear passengers – especially those in the middle seat – will have more room to stretch out. There could even be a second boot under the car’s bonnet for storing your charging cables.

As well as aiming the new Touran at private buyers, Volkswagen will also be keeping an eye on the commercial taxi and shuttle business, which was dominated by the Ford Galaxy until that model was discontinued in 2023.

According to sources, Volkswagen is readying the new Touran to appeal to buyers who don’t want an SUV, and consider the ID Buzz to be too expensive. The cheapest ID Buzz with seven seats at the time of writing costs from £59,645 – almost £20,000 more than the current Touran. That suggests a starting price of around £45,000 for the new Touran, placing it in-between the current ID 5 and ID 7, and crucially below the ID Buzz.

Read more: Best seven-seaters

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